This system relates to the packing of food products. More specifically this invention relates to transporting food products to a loader.
When meat products such as sausages or hotdogs are made and taken from an oven the product must be conveyed to a loader to be loaded for a packaging machine. For certain types of loaders the sausage is conveyed end to end. In the sausage arts in order to properly load the links of sausages the pitch or spacing between the links must be a minimum of 40 mm between the links. This spacing is required for proper operation of the loader. Currently, a plurality of conveyors are used to transport the links where each successive conveyor transports the links at a higher rate than the last to ensure the space between the links exceeds the minimum distance. By having a second conveyor moving at a speed faster than a first conveyor when a first link in moved onto the second conveyor it is moving at a speed greater than the first conveyor. This increases the distance between the links.
As a result of this effect, multiple conveyors being used, and the initial inconsistency of the spacing between sausages, the spacing between the links on an average becomes significantly more than the minimum 40 mm required for spacing. Consequently, the amount of links loaded decreases because of this excess spacing. Additionally, increasing conveyor speeds is also problematic because the loader can only handle in-taking links at a certain velocity. Above this speed the links tend to not go into the loader as desired which can result in a pile up of sausages causing the machine to have to be shut down further reducing production.
Therefore, a principal objective of the present invention is to control the average spacing between conveyed food products.
Yet another aspect of the present invention is to increase the efficiency of the conveyance process in packaging meat products.
These and other objectives, features and advantages will become apparent from the specification and claims.